After having largely dominated AS Saint-Etienne in the championship on Saturday (1-6), Paris Saint-Germain found, this time, the Chemin de la Coute de France by facing the USL Dunkirk, the beautiful surprise of this 2025 edition, on the lawn of the Pierre-Mauroy stadium in Lille. One week to receive Aston Villa in the quarter -final of the Champions League, the troops of Luis Enrique, which still targets a historic quadruple, refused to take this meeting lightly. The Spanish coach announced it before the match. As in front of the Greens in Ligue 1 a few days earlier, it was important not to underestimate the players of Luis Castro: “The unpredictability of the competition, each match is different. Dunkirk plays well with and without the ball, it will be a difficult match. The risk of taking others from high? After analyzing the match (against Saint-Etienne), the first half hour has more to do with Saint-Etienne than with us. We were not at our usual pace, but Saint-Etienne played very well».
And that did not miss since at the break, Dunkirk already led by two goals to zero in an atmosphere of madness in Pierre-Mauroy. Eccentric on the left side, Naatan Skytta perfectly slipped the ball into the head of Alec Georgen to the second post. The former Parisian diverted the head ball for Vincent Sasso who opened the scoring from the start of the match (7th). If PSG tried to come back, the players of the capital once again were surprised with a huge defensive misunderstanding between Marquinhos and Nuno Mendes. Muhanad al-Saad took advantage of the long clearance of his goalkeeper Ewen Jaouen and the air duel won by Gaëtan Courtet to double the bet and ring the Parisians (27th). If PSG was finally doing well thanks to an awakening by Ousmane Dembélé (scorer and passer), a large instigator of the Parisian Montaada, the four Parisian defenders never seemed serene, even when Luis Enrique's troops led to the score. Enough to ask a few questions, as we approach an end of the season that promises to be loaded and possibly historical.
Wanderings and misunderstandings …
For this poster, Luis Enrique almost established his classic defense with Nuno Mendes and Achraf Hakimi on the sides, Marquinhos in the axis which was accompanied by Lucas Berado. So only Willian Pacho was missing to have the magic quartet. Yet everything did not work like on casters. The second goal from Dunkirk comes clearly from big individual mistakes: lost aerial duel Marquinhos, bad intervention by Nuno Mendes and a placement of Safonov which leaves to be desired: “Football is completely unreal. This match had nothing to do with that of Saint-Etienne, where there was initially a defensive rhythm defect. There, the players of Dunkirk passed the midline twice in the first period and scored two goals on faults of inattention on our part. It's unreal, 2-0 was unfair but football completely ignores what is fair or unfair. My team has demonstrated maturity, an ambition to always return all situations in all matches. We played against a good team but which played constantly with a very low block, sometimes with ten players in the surface», Preferred to put Luis Enrique into perspective at a press conference. Throughout the game, Achraf Hakimi seemed to be out of defense on his side, while Lucas Beraldo had great difficulty relaunching cleanly. The majority of the Dunkirk actions come from avoidable faults for Parisians, before the players re -mobilize to seek victory:
“”They were no longer allowed to make transitions. We deserve to win and be a finalist of the French Cup. We are not unbeatable, we are not film heroes. We are a team that will continue to collect goals. Perfection does not exist. But we have always kept our faith in the team, we kept the structure to properly control things». As for Marquinhos, defensive pillar and captain, he does not seem worried – quite the contrary: “We expected a match like that, a difficult match. We really wanted to not take a goal at the start of the match because we knew that the start of the match was important. It made us work important things for this end of the season that will be important. It made us work on the courage, the intensity to seek this result. It was a very courageous Dunkirk team. They managed to perform on the details of the first half. They scored on a free kick and a deviated long ball. On both goals, they were effective. But we are very happy with the final result. We had courage, we went to seek qualification, we worked things that are important for this end of the season». If victory and qualification are acquired, this defensive copy must be used for a week by Aston Villa.
